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Eleven books by a shoemaker of Görlitz who wrote, by his own account, because he could not help it. Ten of them stand here in the seventeenth-century English of John Sparrow, who translated Boehme within a generation of his death and whose prose is itself now four hundred years old; where that English has drifted out of reach, the facing pane carries a modern register — the same text with archaic inflection and spelling normalised by rule, never paraphrased. Nothing is reworded, and where no register appears beside a passage it is because the rules found nothing to change.
The eleventh book is not in English at all, and it is the reason this note exists.
Des trois principes de l'essence divine, printed at Paris in 1802, is the same work as Concerning the Three Principles of the Divine Essence, which stands here as the second book — the same twenty-seven chapters in the same order, opening `Du premier principe de l'essence divine` against Sparrow's `Of the first Principle of the Divine Essence`. Its translator was Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, who gave the last years of his life to putting Boehme into French, and who has a shelf of his own in this Lycaeum.
That makes a closed circuit inside this archive, and it is worth naming plainly. Saint-Martin translates Boehme. La Iniciación, printed in Montevideo a hundred and forty years later, traces its own descent through Saint-Martin. A reader can therefore follow one thread from a German mystic of 1619, through the French philosopher who carried him into another language, to a Spanish-language monthly of the 1940s that claimed them both — and read every step of it in the original.
The two are shelved as one work rather than two because that is what they are. They are not set as facing panes: an English translation of 1619 and a French translation of 1802 are two independent readings of a lost German original, and pairing them line by line would assert a correspondence neither translator ever claimed.
16. The true man in the heavenly image hath no time; his time is like a round crown, or a whole rainbow, which hath no beginning nor end: for the image, which is the similitude of God, hath neither beginning nor number: it hath stood from eternity in the wisdom of God as a virgin without bringing forth [generating], or without willing; for God's willing was the willing in her; she hath appeared [shone forth] in the Holy Ghost with all the wonders which we have brought to essence and light in this world. 7. But she was without body, without substance, without essences; the essences were out of the eternal centre in her made stirring with their creation, as in three mothers, according to the Three Principles: That God would be manifested in all the Three Principles was the creation; and that the dominion of the image did not continue in its order and appointment was the death, in that the middle gave itself into the outward, and the outward into the middle, which is not the ordinance [order of law] of the eternity: and therefore there happened a breaking: for the outward in the middle hath a beginning, and a number, and therefore it goeth to the end, and must break itself off 'from the middle again, and this the longing desire hath done, it hath set the middle (wherein there is an eternal life) outward, and let in the outward into the middle.
28. Thus the life consisteth in three parts; as first, the inward, which is God's eternal hidden Mystery in the fire, from whence the life existeth: And secondly, the middle, which hath stood from eternity as an image or similitude of God in the wonders of God, without substance, in which God's desire was to see himself in an image; and just as a man seeth himself in a glass, so was this also: And so thirdly, this image in the creation hath again got a glass to see itself in, which was the Spiritus Majoris Mundi, the spirit of the great world, viz. the outward Principle, which is also a figure of the eternal [Principle]. 9. And on this [outward] figure the image hath so gazed that it hath imagined and received in the outward image; which must now break off again: but seeing it is bound with its bond to the eternal centre of nature, therefore it happeneth to be very painful to break off as to that bond; for there one life is broken off. 10. And when the air ceaseth, then the fire must be smothered, and go into its ether, and that is death: for the outward Principle and the inward break off one from another; for the outward hath a beginning, and the inward not; and therefore the outward must break off.
311. The outward consisteth only in the sun's tincture, and its dominion is the planets and stars, who always drive on their dominion to the limit [or period of their course], for every planet hath its limit in that place it stood in at the creation, and that is its period, and its seculum, or course: and when it cometh to that place, or point, then all whatsoever it was wholly lord over, breaketh: for it beginneth a new course or seculum. 12. But you must understand it aright, [thus], Every one [of the planets] hath not the tincture of life: Saturn, Mars, and Jupiter have the great life; Saturn separateth whatsoever he getteth in his limit, he doth it not [actually], but he leaveth the life, and then it hath no leader, but breaketh of itself, and so it is with the other [planets] . But its limit or period must reach to the crown of the stars [or zodiac of signs], in that sign and point in which the planet hath its limit and period. 13. And therefore many a young child, even in its mother's womb, is old enough for death, for its lord [The lord of its ascendant] is at his period, and leaveth its child; and the cause why we cannot [easily] search out our end is, that we do not properly and exactly know the limit of our leader [calculation of nativities] : for we must know its number or period, and the number or period of the sign, if we will hit the point of our limit or end.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
16. The true man in the heavenly image hath no time; his time is like a round crown, or a whole rainbow, which hath no beginning nor end: for the image, which is the similitude of God, hath neither beginning nor number: it hath stood from eternity in the wisdom of God as a virgin without bringing forth [generating], or without willing; for God's willing was the willing in her; she hath appeared [shone forth] in the Holy Ghost with all the wonders which we have brought to essence and light in this world. 7. But she was without body, without substance, without essences; the essences were out of the eternal centre in her made stirring with their creation, as in three mothers, according to the Three Principles: That God would be manifested in all the Three Principles was the creation; and that the dominion of the image did not continue in its order and appointment was the death, in that the middle gave itself into the outward, and the outward into the middle, which is not the ordinance [order of law] of the eternity: and therefore there happened a breaking: for the outward in the middle hath a beginning, and a number, and therefore it goeth to the end, and must break itself off 'from the middle again, and this the longing desire hath done, it hath set the middle (wherein there is an eternal life) outward, and let in the outward into the middle.
28. Thus the life consisteth in three parts; as first, the inward, which is God's eternal hidden Mystery in the fire, from whence the life existeth: And secondly, the middle, which hath stood from eternity as an image or similitude of God in the wonders of God, without substance, in which God's desire was to see himself in an image; and just as a man seeth himself in a glass, so was this also: And so thirdly, this image in the creation hath again got a glass to see itself in, which was the Spiritus Majoris Mundi, the spirit of the great world, viz. the outward Principle, which is also a figure of the eternal [Principle]. 9. And on this [outward] figure the image hath so gazed that it hath imagined and received in the outward image; which must now break off again: but seeing it is bound with its bond to the eternal centre of nature, therefore it happeneth to be very painful to break off as to that bond; for there one life is broken off. 10. And when the air ceaseth, then the fire must be smothered, and go into its ether, and that is death: for the outward Principle and the inward break off one from another; for the outward hath a beginning, and the inward not; and therefore the outward must break off.
311. The outward consisteth only in the sun's tincture, and its dominion is the planets and stars, who always drive on their dominion to the limit [or period of their course], for every planet hath its limit in that place it stood in at the creation, and that is its period, and its seculum, or course: and when it cometh to that place, or point, then all whatsoever it was wholly lord over, breaketh: for it beginneth a new course or seculum. 12. But you must understand it aright, [thus], Every one [of the planets] hath not the tincture of life: Saturn, Mars, and Jupiter have the great life; Saturn separateth whatsoever he getteth in his limit, he doth it not [actually], but he leaveth the life, and then it hath no leader, but breaketh of itself, and so it is with the other [planets] . But its limit or period must reach to the crown of the stars [or zodiac of signs], in that sign and point in which the planet hath its limit and period. 13. And therefore many a young child, even in its mother's womb, is old enough for death, for its lord [The lord of its ascendant] is at his period, and leaveth its child; and the cause why we cannot [easily] search out our end is, that we do not properly and exactly know the limit of our leader [calculation of nativities] : for we must know its number or period, and the number or period of the sign, if we will hit the point of our limit or end.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
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